Processing...
When websites and applications are not inclusive, companies risk losing millions of users who face barriers in performing basic actions like browsing content, completing payments, and accessing essential services. Beyond user frustration, accessibility gaps lead to abandoned carts, poor engagement metrics, and negative brand perception. In regulated markets, the lack of digital accessibility can also trigger costly lawsuits and compliance penalties.
Organizations that fail to prioritize accessibility find themselves struggling to scale—because an inaccessible product doesn’t just exclude people with disabilities, it limits overall usability for everyone. The good news? Fixing accessibility opens new revenue streams, improves product usability, and strengthens brand trust. In this article, we’ll walk through web accessibility best practices, explain how to assess and improve accessibility, explore business benefits, and provide practical steps to ensure your web and mobile products are usable by all.
Digital accessibility ensures that everyone—including users with visual, auditory, cognitive, or motor impairments—can fully interact with digital products without barriers. It involves applying the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) to design and development, so that interfaces are perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust across all devices and assistive technologies. Whether provided as web development services or mobile accessibility solutions, accessibility requires thoughtful UX, clean code, adaptable layouts, and compatibility with tools like screen readers, voice navigation, and alternative input devices—ultimately creating inclusive products that meet modern user expectations and regulatory standards.
Governments worldwide are reinforcing mandates requiring digital accessibility. In the US, why digital accessibility matters goes beyond inclusivity: it’s now a legal obligation. Ignoring accessibility exposes businesses to costly lawsuits, civil penalties, government enforcement actions, reputational damage, higher long-term remediation expenses, and the loss of customers who are unable to use the product.
Under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), organizations must ensure their digital products include accessible UX and UI design supported by regular website accessibility audits and continuous monitoring. On April 24, 2024, the US Department of Justice issued a final rule requiring state and local governments to comply with WCAG 2.1 Level AA for bothweb content and mobile apps. Compliance deadlines depend on the size of the entity:
Who must comply and by when:
But compliance ripple effects go further. Private-sector organizations connected to these public entities—or whose digital products must be usable by their citizens (e.g., healthcare providers, payment systems, transit services, and educational tools)—will also face increasing pressure to align with accessibility standards. Additionally, ADA Title III continues to drive legal action in the private sector across industries like e-commerce, finance, travel, and hospitality.
In the European Union, the European Accessibility Act (EAA) requires that key digital products and services—including e-commerce platforms, banking services, mobile applications, and consumer technologies—comply with accessibility requirements by June 28, 2025. The UK follows the Equality Act 2010, mandating accessible design to avoid digital discrimination. Canada enforces accessibility through the Accessible Canada Act (ACA), while many Asia-Pacific regions, including Australia and Japan, have their own strong regulatory frameworks based on WCAG guidelines. The trend is clear: no matter where a business operates, accessibility compliance is becoming a global standard—and a competitive necessity.
Web pages rely heavily on semantic structure, headings, lists, and form elements to convey information clearly to screen reader users. Images include alternative text, and keyboard navigation via the tab key allows users to move across interactive elements efficiently. These features support screen reader compatibility and improve search engine optimization.
On mobile devices, accessibility depends on touch interactions, smaller screen sizes, and different user agents. User interface components must accommodate gestures, scalable visual elements, and responsive layouts. Captions and transcripts are often provided for time-based media, ensuring users can access content without visual cues.
Both web and mobile accessibility follow W3C accessibility standards, but the emphasis differs. Web focuses on structural markup and keyboard accessibility, while mobile prioritizes responsive design, gesture support, and maintaining screen reader compatibility across multiple platforms.
Text descriptions and labeled form elements help users navigate and understand the interface. Mobile designs often rely on visual cues and touch targets, while web pages depend on a consistent hierarchical layout to communicate meaning.
Follow these digital accessibility best practices, which are proven in practice by NIX, to systematically improve usability, ensure compliance, and make your products inclusive for all users.
All images, icons, infographics, charts, and visual content should include descriptive alt text that conveys purpose and meaning. Decorative images should still be coded correctly to avoid confusion with functional content. This ensures that screen readers can accurately describe content to users with visual impairments. Detailed alt text helps meet web accessibility best practices, and adding descriptions for complex visuals, like charts or infographics, supports accessibility for all. Consider providing long descriptions for complex diagrams when necessary.
Text, icons, and interactive elements must have a high enough contrast with their backgrounds to be readable for users with vision impairments. Use WCAG-recommended contrast ratios (at least 4.5:1 for normal text). Avoid subtle color differences that can cause confusion for color-blind users. Combining proper color contrast with visual cues like borders or patterns ensures that important information is perceivable. Performing digital accessibility improvement audits and contrast checks during development prevents common accessibility pitfalls.
Ensure all website or application functionality can be operated using a keyboard alone. This includes menus, dropdowns, modals, forms, and interactive elements. Provide visible focus indicators and maintain a logical tab order so users can easily navigate pages without a mouse. Testing with multiple keyboard layouts and assistive devices strengthens accessibility testing and QA and ensures users with mobility impairments or preference for keyboard navigation can fully interact with your site.
Organize content with semantic headings (H1–H6), subheadings, and structured sections to improve readability and scanability. Consistency in structure across pages and sections allows users, including those using screen readers, to understand content hierarchy. Clear headings reduce cognitive load, helping all users, especially those with learning disabilities. Well-structured content supports digital accessibility improvement and improves both usability and comprehension across large, complex sites.
Interactive components, such as buttons, links, and form fields, must be easily identifiable and operable. Include ARIA labels, clear focus states, and sufficient touch targets for mobile accessibility. Ensure forms have descriptive labels, instructions, and error handling that can be interpreted by assistive technologies. Using proper HTML semantics and following software engineering expertise principles ensures consistent behavior across browsers and screen readers, improving accessibility for all users.
All videos, podcasts, webinars, and other audio-visual content should include accurate captions and transcripts. Captions help users who are hearing impaired and also improve comprehension for all users in noisy environments. Transcripts enable search indexing and text-based consumption of media content. Updating captions and transcripts with every new version ensures ongoing digital accessibility compliance and enhances user experience.
Text content should be easily resizable without breaking layout or functionality, supporting users with low vision. Use relative units like em/rem instead of fixed pixels and ensure responsive typography across devices. Line height, letter spacing, and paragraph spacing should maintain readability when scaling. Combining scalable text with logical heading structures contributes to accessibility improvement and ensures all users can comfortably consume content regardless of device or vision needs.
Do not use color alone to convey meaning, such as status indicators or error messages. Combine colors with text labels, patterns, or icons to ensure information is accessible to color-blind users. Using multiple indicators increases comprehension for all users and aligns with digital accessibility improvement initiatives. Designers should always test components with simulated color blindness tools and ensure information is perceivable in grayscale.
Navigation menus, sidebars, and interactive sections should follow a consistent structure across all pages. Predictable layouts reduce user confusion and cognitive load, especially for users relying on assistive technologies. Include skip links, landmarks, and consistent page templates.
Regularly validate websites and applications using screen readers, voice commands, keyboard-only navigation, and other assistive tools. Combine automated testing tools with manual checks to identify accessibility gaps. Testing ensures users with disabilities can interact with content as intended and that new features do not introduce barriers. Conduct periodic accessibility testing and QA and schedule comprehensive accessibility audits to maintain compliance, improve digital accessibility, and continually refine your user experience.
Regular accessibility audits are essential to maintain and improve the usability of digital products over time. These audits involve systematically reviewing websites, apps, and digital content to identify barriers that may prevent people with disabilities from interacting effectively. By combining automated tools with manual testing, teams can uncover issues that might be missed otherwise, such as navigation quirks, focus order problems, or missing labels. Conducting audits at key stages of development and after significant updates helps track progress, reduces the risk of compliance gaps, and ensures that accessibility improvements are sustained.
The WCAG compliance score provides a quantitative measure of how closely a digital product aligns with digital accessibility standards. By assessing adherence to WCAG 2.1 Level AA or AAA guidelines, organizations can track improvements in text alternatives, color contrast, form labeling, and semantic markup. Regularly monitoring the compliance score helps teams identify gaps in product design and consulting and informs updates in CMS development workflows to ensure ongoing accessibility alignment.
Automated accessibility tools analyze websites, mobile apps, and CMS-driven platforms for common issues such as missing alt text, insufficient contrast, and incorrect ARIA roles. These tools provide actionable reports that help development teams quickly remediate errors and monitor trends over time. By combining automated scans with digital accessibility strategy, teams can maintain a consistent baseline and accelerate improvements in product design and consulting processes.
Manual testing involves accessibility experts navigating the product to uncover issues that automated tools cannot detect, such as cognitive accessibility challenges or nuanced layout problems. Observations during CMS development or user interface adjustments inform practical fixes to enhance readability, clarity, and interactive flows. Tracking these outcomes ensures that digital accessibility improvements are meaningful and aligned with real user experience.
Testing with popular screen readers (like JAWS, NVDA, or VoiceOver) ensures that digital accessibility measures are effective for visually impaired users. These checks evaluate whether user interface components and form elements are correctly announced, whether alternative text is descriptive, and whether navigation is logical. Regular screen reader testing provides assurance that product design and consulting decisions deliver accessible content across platforms.
Measuring the ability of users to navigate an interface entirely using a keyboard highlights accessibility issues for individuals unable to use a mouse. This metric evaluates whether user interface components, links, and form elements are reachable and logically ordered, and whether tab order flows naturally. Tracking the completion rate helps CMS development teams identify gaps in digital accessibility and validate improvements over time.
Direct feedback from users with disabilities is critical to understanding practical accessibility gaps that tools cannot detect. Surveys, interviews, and testing sessions can uncover issues in readability, navigation, and user interface interactions. Incorporating this feedback into product design and consulting initiatives and CMS development cycles ensures that digital accessibility improvements are both effective and meaningful for real users.
Making your digital products accessible isn’t just about compliance—it’s about creating experiences that everyone can use, enjoy, and trust. Accessible design drives engagement, loyalty, and measurable business value across audiences and markets.
Accessible digital products help companies comply with laws and regulations, reducing the risk of fines and lawsuits. Businesses that ignore accessibility face potential legal action that can be costly and damage reputation. Following accessibility standards ensures your products meet industry requirements and demonstrate responsible governance.
Digital accessibility allows more people, including those with disabilities, to access your products and services. Expanding access can increase your market share and revenue potential. Inclusive products ensure that no customer segment is left out, supporting long-term business growth.
An accessible product offers a smooth and consistent experience for all users. It improves satisfaction, engagement, and loyalty, as users can interact without friction. Inclusive experiences foster positive perceptions of your brand and encourage repeat business.
Companies that prioritize accessibility are seen as socially responsible and forward-thinking. Demonstrating empathy and inclusivity strengthens trust with customers and partners. A strong reputation can differentiate your business from competitors in crowded markets.
Accessible content often aligns with best practices for search engines, including clear headings and alt text. This improves visibility, search rankings, and organic traffic. SEO benefits reinforce your marketing efforts and drive business growth.
Building accessibility into your products from the start avoids expensive retrofits later. Retrofitting inaccessible systems often requires significant redesign, development, and testing. Early adoption reduces long-term costs and ensures more efficient use of resources.
Accessibility is essential for creating inclusive digital experiences that reach all users and enhance overall usability. NIX helps businesses implement digital accessibility solutions, ensuring compliance, user satisfaction, and measurable improvement across web and mobile products.
01/
The four principles, defined by the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), are:
Robust: Content must work reliably across different user agents, browsers, and assistive technologies like screen readers. This ensures long-term accessibility and compatibility with evolving technologies.
02/
The WCAG are technical standards developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) that define how to make digital content accessible to people with disabilities. The ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) is a US law that requires businesses to provide accessible services, including websites and mobile apps. In short, WCAG provides the technical “how,” while the ADA sets the legal “must”, meaning following WCAG helps meet ADA compliance requirements but ADA enforcement is based on law rather than guidelines.
03/
Every website should include:
How often should companies run accessibility audits? Accessibility audits should be conducted at least twice a year for active websites or digital products. Companies should also perform audits after major updates, redesigns, or CMS migrations. Regular audits, including automated scans, manual testing, and screen reader checks, ensure continued compliance, detect new barriers, and maintain a high-quality user experience for people with disabilities.
Be the first to get blog updates and NIX news!
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
SHARE THIS ARTICLE:
Schedule Meeting
